The third day of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Academic Conference 2019 began with a keynote lecture by Dr. Kripa Ananthpur, Associate Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies. Dr. Ananthpur’s research interests include democratic decentralization, informal institutions, and women’s empowerment and political participation. Her talk, titled Fostering Active Citizenship: What Role Can Local Governance Play?, presented a participatory model of evidence-based decision making.
It is often held that there is a certain contestation between the concepts of identity and citizenship. This manifests itself in interesting ways; for instance, Nasser Hussain, the English cricket captain, once expressed his disappointment at the disloyalty of British Asians who cheer for Indian or Pakistani teams. Such instances call to make conceptualizations of citizenship more inclusive so as to include multiple ethnic identities.
Dr. Ananthpur then introduced Naila Kabeer’s work on inclusive citizenship. Kabeer asks what citizenship means to disenfranchised, excluded people; how do they experience and articulate it? They attach four values to the notion of citizenship – justice, recognition, self-determination and solidarity. Also, there are two aspects of citizenship: vertical and horizontal. While vertical citizenship refers to the relationship between the citizen and the state, horizontal citizenship is the relationship between citizens. The latter is equally important in inclusive citizenship.
From theoretical conceptualizations of citizenship, it is essential to move to an understanding of citizenship as a practice by looking at the actual spaces where such citizenship is expressed. One such space is the local governance mechanism, a microcosm of the state. The common person performs his civic duties and asserts her rights as a citizen here. It is an ‘invited space’. This means that its legitimacy cannot be challenged, unlike ‘popular spaces’ that are essentially demanded spaces. However, to make them truly inclusive, there must be participatory parity in such spaces; the poor and marginalised must have access to them. Towards this end, countries across the world have set up legal-institutional frameworks; examples include Gram Sabha in India and participatory budgeting in Brazil.
Now we come to the aspect that Dr. Ananthpur focused on in the talk: how technology can be used to foster active citizenship. For this, technology needs to be made participative. She cited the case of the P-Tracking project in Tamil Nadu that she was part of. P-Tracking (Participatory Tracking) was a project sponsored by the World Bank’s Social Observatory. It used ICT and data visualization tools developed jointly with communities to enable members of the community to design, collect, and analyze their own data. This means that the community decided what metrics they wanted to be evaluated on. It also ensured that the information collected flowed back into the hands of the participants allowing them to track the impact of programs designed for them.
P-Tracking was adopted to prepare Village Panchayat Development Plans (VPDPs) when the 14th Finance Commission mandated participatory VPDPs for grant release to panchayats. With the help of the Social Observatory, participatory tracking was done in Theni and Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu. It was found that panchayats where VPDPs were participative had better participation and higher community attendance, and was less top-down.
With the advances in technology, there is enormous possibility for its application in governance. However, the power aspect of access to technology must be kept in mind, Dr. Ananthpur concluded. If technology is not inclusive, it will only aggravate marginalisation of the excluded.
Report by Swathi CS
Photograph by Sathya Priya
Article 19 